Pride makes some indulge, others cautious

WASHINGTON - Are you proud of your achievements? Then you are likely to either indulge yourself, or be more cautious than usual, researchers say.

“We show that pride is associated with two opposing forces. It promotes a sense of achievement, which increases indulgence, and it promotes self-awareness, which facilitates self control,” a statement by the researchers said.

Keith Wilcox and Sankar Sen from Babson and Baruch Colleges, respectively, and Thomas Kramer, University of South Carolina, set out to examine the effect of pride on consumer self-control decisions, and discovered that pride has different varieties.

One variant - pride in a sense of achievement - leads to people wanting to reward themselves with indulgences, reports the Journal of Consumer Research.

Another kind of pride features increased self-awareness, according to a South Carolina statement.

In their first study, the researchers asked students to write about a proud moment and then make a choice that involved self-control.

Participants were asked to choose between two gift certificates: a less-indulgent one that could be used for school supplies or one that could be used for entertainment.

“As we predicted, when the sense of achievement factored more heavily into the decision, students were more likely to select the entertainment gift certificate,” the authors write.

In subsequent studies, the authors found that consumers who experienced pride in a sense of achievement were more likely to choose French fries over a salad with their lunch entre.

The authors also found that happiness, another positive emotion, did not have the same effect on consumer choice as pride.